Learning the similarities between chord progressions and songs helps you remember a lot of songs. There's a lot more in common between songs than one might think.

This series of lessons explores common chord progressions.

Listening to songs and wanting to play the same songs on ukulele - that's what draws most people to the ukulele. That and it looks like a load of fun and easy too play - which it is. Then you need to actually remember the songs that you're learning so you can play them again. And, hopefully not have to read them off a sheet all the time.

Remembering a song is lot like remembering the directions for a road trip. There are the turn-by-turn directions, road maps, signs and landmarks that will get you to where you are going. Turn here, turn there, remember this and remember that landmark. With a songs it's the chords, the melody, style, the harmonic cells, the form, etc that are part of the song that you want to remember.

Playing chords, chord progressions, and songs by ear is all about getting your ear to recognize the sound of chords and chord progressions and just like melodies, train the fingers and the hand to follow your inner ear and play these chords, chord progressions, and songs on demand.

This training involves the mind, hands and ear. Of the three the hands always need the most work as they can't hear or understand anything - only what they have been trained to do so.

Playing melodies, licks, riffs, motifs, single note lines by ear is all about getting your ear to recognize intervals and train the fingers-the hand to follow your inner ear and play these melodies on demand.

Playing rhythm by ear is all about getting your ear to recognize the sound of rhythm and just like melodies, train the fingers and the hands to follow your inner ear and play these rhythms on demand. Learning to play rhythms using a monotone, one note or sound is a lot easier to learn than learning to hear and play melodies.

Rhythm is best learned using Chuck Anderson's Modular Phonetic Rhythm System. I've had nothing but success using this system with my personal private students.

Modular Phonetic Rhythm represents a significant advance in the teaching and application of rhythm. Eliminating many inefficient aspects of rhythm education, Modular Phonetic Rhythm streamlines the traditional educational approach, resulting in a reflexive reaction when play rhythm.

Playing by ear is the ultimate goal for any musician when playing a musical instrument. It’s true whether you’re singing, banging a drum, strumming a guitar, or our favorite instrument, the ukulele.

If your fingers can already interpret and follow what your inner ear commands, you’ve obtained your goal and are playing by ear. However, the fact is that it's actually very uncommon for individuals to be able to play by ear with no apparent effort.

The Pentatonic/Major Pentatonic scale is one of the six essential scales that every ukulele player should know.

Here are the chords for all 15 Pentatonic/Major Pentatonic scales.